


the chemical scent of disinfectant

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: Thunderbirds Prompts [26]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hospitals, Oneshot, Pen and Ink, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7877680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chatroom prompt: "write about a phobia" - and Gordon</p><p>Basically an excuse to write Penelope and Gordon</p>
            </blockquote>





	the chemical scent of disinfectant

It's the smell that does it. It's disinfectant and the imagined scent of blood, though no one's bleeding. Or, people are bleeding, but no one's bleeding anywhere near *him*. It's just an average hospital ward. The rooms are all private, no one in this part of the hospital's undergone anything serious. Penny's had a minor operation. She's fine. Recuperating for two days under observation, and then she'll be back home. By all accounts, she's cheerful and looking forward to visitors. There's jsut something about hospital visitors, she'd said, when he'd called to see how she was. How much it meant that people would go out of their way. The sort of small, lovely gesture that she notices and cherishes.

So Gordon's visiting. He's brought flowers, and he buries his face in them like it'll help, but he can't get the smell of disinfectant out of his nostrils, and he nearly inhales a peony as he starts gasping. Her doctor's in the room, he'd been told to wait, but he can't wait much longer. There are nurses voices and intercoms and the beeping of medical equipment, and it makes his head swoop and swim and pins him back to a gurney, three, four years ago now, broken and dying and with the ceiling of a hospital corridor whisking by overhead. Lights flashing in and out of his field of view, and his vision greying out from the edges. There are flowers scattered on the floor and his hands hit cold linoleum and "Sir? *Sir*", urgently, though no one calls him 'sir'. And he can't breathe, and he's dying again, and oh god, they'll cut him open. With the knives and the bandages and the masks and the eyes that don't meet his, but talk about him like he's a problem they aren't quite sure they can solve. A long, nightmarish series of months in a hospital, all in the scent of disinfectant.

But then one of his gasping bids for air fills his lungs with the scent of jasmine, vanilla, Chanel No.5. And there are arms around his neck and warm blonde hair like sunshine for him to bury his face in, a soft silk gown to tangle around his fingers. She smells clean, but it's a different kind of clean, warmer and safer and infinitely kind. Her hands find his face, his shoulders, his fingers, pull him to his feet. And her voice is soft and her words are good, and by the time he's okay again, they're sitting on a bench across the street from the hospital, Penny in her dressing gown and Gordon with a handful of flowers that weren't raggedy when he picked them out at the gift shop. Lacking the words, he picks the best of the tattered lot, and tucks it behind her ear. And she smiles and squeezes the hand she hasn't let go of.


End file.
